Classified Ad Ventures Acquires Hippo Jobs

Simon Baker, the CEO of Classified Ad Ventures, has acquired the youth job board Hippo. Hippo appointed an administrator on March 24th.

This is a great result for James Masini, General Manager and founder of Hippo Jobs, as it gives him an economic lifeline and allows him a continued involvement in the company.

Simon has a good track record as a leader at the helm of a fledgling classified businesses. He resuscitated a drowning realestate.com.au in 2001 when they were down to their last few dollars. There, Simon grew revenues from $4m to $155m in FY 2008.

Simon Baker said, “We believe that niche jobs sites are a growing opportunity. Managers have less time than ever to troll through the hundreds of irrelevant CVs they often receive from the general jobs sites. Our investment in ArtsHub shows that by having a targeted audience, we are able to deliver a small number of quality candidates that meet the advertisers’ requirements.”

“Hippo has successfully matched the youth of Australia with employers of choice for the past 2 years. As part of the Classified Ad Ventures, advertisers and candidates using Hippo Jobs will benefit from a combined 40 years of online classified experience and receive better results.”

Hippo Jobs will report to Chris Vulovic, the head of Classified Ad Ventures’ Innovation team.

Seek Feeding The Hippo

First it was Linkme, see article here, now it’s Hippo. Hippo is now advertising, see job ad here, for sales staff…on Seek (and CareerOne). I say, back yourself, Hippo. Put your ads. on your own board. Jeez, Louise.

Feeding The Hippo

Here’s a sign of the times. I spotted this question from an employer in the PageUp People forum.

We are considering using Hippo.com as an advertising medium to attract candidates for our call centre. (along with other mediums).

Has anyone had any experience with them, if so would appreciate your feedback?

It got me thinking. A little flush of excitement rushed to my cheeks as I considered how intrinsic the internet is now to the way we communicate.

Of course, folks have always chatted to one another about their satisfaction or otherwise with products and services they’ve used. But I can’t recall a time in the history of humanity when we’ve chatted to a reader or listener who is unknown to us. Not only that, we are then prepared to take the advice of that unknown entity and, presumably, act on it.

Prior to sources of information such as Hippo, a person interested in their service would have had to ask someone they knew had used the service, or they would have had to read some form of advertising propaganda published by the company.

Of course this form of “word-of-mouth” raises all sorts of questions about the reliability of respondents. They may have agendas around promoting the service, or not promoting it to keep it for themselves. None the less, it is interesting that we are willing to disregard these pitfalls in favor of gathering info.

Anyways. Enough philosophising. For those of you unfamiliar with Hippo, I thought I’d provide you with a few facts.
A quick check on the site shows:

- close to 200 jobs nationally.

- a focus on part-time/casual jobs aimed at young people .

- a large % of jobs advertised are for the hospitality industry.

- ranked number 56th on the latest Hitwise Australia rankings with 0.18% market share. (Seek ranked 1st and has 26.25%).

- $90 per job. (Seek $180+GST)